Reformation History (Roland H. Bainton)-1

Hong Chi-mo/Lee ​​Hun-young (Christian Digest)
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1. Content summary

Reformation in the 16th century occurred in the late Middle Ages and in the midst of great turmoil in each field. The Renaissance expressed a passion for classical antiquity rather than Christian antiquity, and nationalism that emerged at the same time weakened the Holy Roman Empire and weakened the pope's priesthood system. Reformation was, above all, a revival of religion. The target of Martin Luther's attack was limited to the Pope's priesthood system, and his efforts were to restore the church in the early Middle Ages. In that case, the original form of the church to be restored should have been in St. Augustine or even in the Pauline Epistles and the Gospels. Here, his fundamental tone was the restoration of pristine Christianity. Reformation was a reformer of the Christian state. But the church was exploding in all its contradictions during the Middle Ages. Among them, the indulgences were the culmination of church corruption. The surplus merit was stored in God's treasure house, and the Pope was the logic that he could freely transfer it to those who could not pay for his sins. The church was exploiting the people by all means.

[Luther's Faith]

Catholic interpreters argue that the Reformation was an extension, not a correction, of the late Middle Ages. Because the reformers removed the discipline instead of resurrecting it, for example, replacing the concubinage of the clergy with the marriage of the clergy. Other Catholic historians regarded Protestantism as an honest attempt to eradicate greed and lust, but saw the enthusiasm as a result of disobedience to the church. It is true that Luther always insisted that philosophy cannot be a measure of faith, but that the Reformation did not start with the disregard of the philosophy and reason of post-Scholarism. The target of his attack was not that of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, but that the Catholic Church itself was the target of his attack as a disease to the gospel. In his judgment, the Catholic Church considered God's dignity and holiness too low and overestimated human values ​​and potential. The church used alternating fears and hopes so that believers would not be overly content with too much satisfaction or use of the means of grace. After portraying hell with a gruesome color that despaired, purgatory was often introduced to alleviate it. Purgatory is the middle layer between heaven and hell, and was a place to continue purifying in preparation for entering paradise. Luther, in view of his own failures, is incapable of dealing with crimes individually and because of the very nature of the human nature itself, which requires fundamental reconstruction. Because it is a thing, we have come to the conclusion that there is no good thing that can never be overflowed or diverted to another.

The late Scholastic theologians Luther studied for theology claimed that God is a law to him. Human destiny is indeterminate, and God's decisions cannot be overtaken. No one can be sure that they are saved. Man's fate is predestined for good or evil, but man cannot know the direction. Nothing he can do makes a difference. Condemned people are condemned no matter what they do. Those who are saved are saved no matter what they do. Luther knew why he had a feeling of being abandoned. God is innocent, but humans are ugly. God is strong, but humans are weak. The answer is that he was sinless for us as an innocent person, and thus identified himself as sinful enough to have a sense of unity with human beings, to deal with all of our sins and experience alienation from God with human beings. . Luther was immersed in the Bible and experienced the meaning of God's forgiveness miracles more than any of those who had come to the world for a thousand years, and claimed that faith and trust, only this is necessary. That's why Luther degraded reason so much and that reason was understood as a measure of the human mind.

[Luther's Reform]

Luther fought one type of Catholic theology, Augustine, and another, Thomasism. Thomas Aquinas ultimately assumed that everything was up to God, but he insisted that humans can contribute to his salvation with the power God has given him. There is room for human reason to intervene.

Luther denied the infallibility of the Pope and the church council. In the case of the merit saving theory, Luther was forced to deny the canon law because it was included in the canon law. This attack on authority was further reinforced by the acceptance of two destructive ideas of eschatology and predestination from the later medieval sects. The pope was called the Antichrist and was criticized. Another idea is that the true church is made up of only those who are predestined, which is only threatening when there is a way to determine who the predestined person is. He took the position that he could not talk about it except that he had to be persecuted and concealed in the world.

Luther's reforms, which began by accusing Catholic corruption, gradually leaned toward rigid Biblicalism. The ultimate authority for him was the Word of God, which meant God's self-revelation through the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection in Christ. This revelation was not temporally constrained by Jesus' historical life, for Christ is everlasting and always present in the hearts of men. But the best Hyunhyeon was through the incarnation. In the Mass, Luther persistently claimed that this was not a sacrifice. The original language of the Eucharist is eucharist, which means gratitude, and the original intention remains. Luther denied constitutionalism, denied that the bread and wine transformed into the body and blood of God, but did not deny the actual and physical presence. Since the Middle Ages, the number of sacraments has been set to seven: marriage, new, servant, confirmation, confession, mass, and baptism. Luther was reduced to two things: the sacrament and baptism, which was to be an external sign of the invisible grace ordained by Christ and was for Christians only. Luther said that the state should not be interfered with by the church within its own sphere. His ideal was a parallel between the church and the state, which in the Middle Ages was supported by the German emperors against the Popes and defended by Dante's fluent brush strokes. His feasibility has not been proven. Luther was going in the direction of Emperor Popeism.

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